Quotes About Sovereignty

The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

This is the Fourth?

A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should to rest on inference.

He [King George III] has erected a multitude of New Offices and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. That government is best which governs least.

The fact is, the primary way that Ottawa and Washington deal with Native people is to ignore us. They know that the court system favors the powerful and the wealthy and the influential, and that, if we buy into the notion of an impartial justice system, tribes and bands can be forced through a long, convoluted, and expensive process designed to wear us down and bankrupt our economies. Be good. Play by our rules. Don't cause a disturbance.

A people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. James Madison

To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.

Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'Tis time to part.

Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.

Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.

That government is best which governs least.

Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'tis time to part.

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensible duty of all government, to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.

Immortal power is not a human right, and therefore cannot be a right of Parliament.

The right of war and peace is in the nation. where else should it reside but in those who are to pay the expense?

The House of Commons did not originate as a matter of right in the people to delegate or elect, but as a grant or boon.

A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government.

Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us?